Yuri Maltsev speaks in Cape Town

Dr. Yuri Maltsev gave a talk today at and Ineng event in central Cape Town. Guests gathered in a boardroom at Ineng’s offices in the CBD and listened to Dr. Maltsev talk about the current political situation in South Africa, Russia and the United States.

He also focused much of his talk on the late Fidel Castro and misconceptions of what life was like on the island under Castro’s Communist regime:

“I’ve been to Cuba several times. Everything worth looking at was built either under the Spanish or Batista (including highways, bridges, and big universities). The complete lack of reliable statistics makes it impossible to offer any exact numbers on the state of the Cuban economy. I’ve traveled to over 80 countries and can compare Cuba only to Malawi or Lesotho in standard of living by visual approximation. Guatemala with its $3,800 per capita GDP looks like a superpower in comparison with the prison island.” – Yuri Maltsev

Above: Yuri Maltsev speaking on the reality of life in Cuba at an Ineng event in Cape Town.

“In the cities, the people live in squalor of communal apartments literally falling apart as they have not been properly maintained since 1959. In many old high rises that I have visited, elevators and indoor plumbing was gone and the buildings were surrounded by primitive outhouses… I visited one of these complexes, and the number who lived there well exceeded the numbers of comrades squeezed in similar buildings in the USSR. There were about 10–12 people living in a small studio apartment, including small children and old age very frail looking seniors. The stench was excruciating.” – Yuri Maltsev

Yuri N. Maltsev is Senior Fellow of the Mises Institute and professor of economics at Carthage College. He worked as an economist on Mikhail Gorbachev’s economic reform team before defecting to the United States in 1989. He has testified before the US Congress and appeared on American, Canadian, Spanish, South African, and Finnish television and radio programs. He has authored and co-authored fifteen books and numerous articles.